A day to celebrate

Firstly I would like to take the opportunity to thank every one out there who asks after, emails, calls, sms's, or even just thinks positive thoughts for Harrison. I think the last week has been one of the most stressful and unhappy weeks of my life.

Almost daily I found myself crying for no reason, other than just lacking in sleep and being stressed about these test results, and suffering right along side of us have been our wonderful support of friends and family everywhere. And in true soppy fashion as soon as I saw my mum yesterday I burst into tears, but luckily of happiness. I didn't realise how stressed out I was until Dr Shaw called with results.

All this good news came on the 29th April ( yesterday) which is also Ella's 3rd Birthday. So hence forth it is a day of celebration. And good friends of ours had their first child - a daughter, named Darcy Barbara. A little 7 pound 9 ounce bundle, so triple the joy. Congratulations to Andrew and Rachel on the birth of beautiful Darcy.

And so the results - we have managed to avoid a second transplant for now. So breathe a big huge sigh of relief. Harrison is doing well within himself and seemed last week to be developing a very chesty cough. But, this seems to be going as quickly as it came. So we are hoping that means he finally is developing a way to fight his own battles - immune wise anyway!! :)

Harrison's counts came back showing all three types of white blood cells - T , B and NK. I talk of the percentages of donor cells - what this means is that there is a percentage of Ella's blood cells in Harrison's system - exactly as we'd expect after her bone marrow was transplanted. Eventually Harrison's blood type will change too( As he and Ella had different blood types - he was A and Ella O so we were very lucky that we could use Ella's marrow - as if the types were reversed Harrison may not have been able to received Ella's marrow afterall!)

The higher the % of female (donor) cells the more successful this transplant will be - ideally achieving 100% for all three types of white blood cells. (A recap) T cells are the main ones that identify infections, the B cells are the all important immunity making cells and the NK cells are the killer ones that do the actual battle. We need to see some really good NK and B cells growth in July to be completely second transplant free - but things are encouraging.

For the first time the NK cells are showing up with female cells at a whopping 20% , the B cells (which are going to be the slowest to grow) are still low but slowly climbing at around 30% and the T cells.... Drum roll please..... are now 76% female cells. So we have now reached a point where Harrison should be less susceptible to the more serious chest infections, and he can be out a little more - of course this is right as we come into cold and flu season, so I won't be taking him too many places!! Also his lymphocyte count which dropped down from 0.7 to 0.4 has gone back to 0.7, so we are going upwards every three months very slowly. But, they are still a long way off where they need to be ( at least 4.0 to function completely normally!) and hopefully the drop just meant he had a bit of a virus. The overall white blood cell count dropped too and this still shows to be very low. Not sure why it just is, hopefully it is nothing much to worry about and things will pick up a bit next month.

We are now back to see the eye Dr's and neurology and have the next big bloods done in July - the 29th at this stage, then a 12 month post transplant review will be held in August. Ideally as I said, the B cells will have come up a bit, and even if they never reach 100% as long as they are there in large numbers then Harrison will be able to produce his own immunity and our life may return to some normality.

I think this is the best news we could have had and I was so, well devastated, that he would have to undergo a second transplant and delay all his good work and development even further, but so good for now. Our friend Ella in Singapore is also going fantastically well, she achieved 100% T cells a while back and her counts are going up too! She is now at 1.88 lymphocytes, so it is something we look at as a positive sign, and Ella has been through the works compared to Harrison so if she can be doing that well, then Harrison can too.

And Scott has just been great through all of this, even though he has been stressed he has kept me together, for which I am ever thankful. I really have had the most appalling week in terms of being super emotional and cranky.

So, July it is , I am going to get going with Chiro and physio again as they were helping Harrison really well, and now that he is walking around furniture and crawling like a mad man everywhere, I want to make sure that he keeps going well, and get him down off his toes! If he was a girl I'd call him a big fat fairy ( ha ha ha) - but as he's not, I won't - but I tell you he'd rival any ballerina in the ability to stand on toes!

Maybe he'll be the next "Billy Elliott" - watch the movie :)

Anyway that's all for now - I popped in a video below to show you how the little tyke is changing from a bub to a boy - a VERY cheeky boy at that !